If you describe yourself as both a sports fan and a busy person, then there are times where you are unaware of the top sports headlines and games coming down to the wire. This is not helpful when a big story becomes the center of water cool talk the next day and you missed it. Because of that concern, USA TODAY Sports Media Group recently launched its trending sports mobile application for both Android and iOS platforms.
Unlike typical sports apps that provide content in a generic fashion, USA TODAY Sports envisions being the solution that mitigates the fear of missing out (FOMO) of sports fans. By capturing the buzz on the stories that everyone is talking about and directing fans to the close, down-to-the-wire games, it allows fans to get ahead of the live moment that everyone will be talking about.
“If I have 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, I don’t always know where to spend that time. I might know what the big game was coming into tonight, but maybe it’s a blowout and if I have 15 minutes, I want to see a competitive game that’s late and close,” said Mark Pesavento, VP of Digital Strategy. Spearheading the initiative along with, Krys Krycinski, Head of Mobile, they deployed the ‘Best. Scoreboard. Ever’, within the app – a dynamic rundown of the top games that fans should tune in at any given moment.
What makes this mobile experience intriguing is the fact that the app is maintained by a dedicated editorial team, whose only job is producing content for the app – In many ways, it’s a true mobile first sports experience. They work with their fellow reporters and editors to deliver content specifically for the app and act more or less as a sport fan’s guide. “We didn’t just want this to be a standard newsreader app that pulls in a bunch of feeds – we wanted there to be a very bespoke-type experience on that top level that it really felt like there was an editor applying logic,” Mark explained.
Taking a deeper look at the ship crew, there’s a team of 7 from Sports Media Group that make up the editorial team for the mobile app – that 7 however can be set to represent a larger group of hundreds of content creators from the Gannett universe including The Big Lead, FTW, etc. Unlike the typical sports application, there is a big emphasis on human-curated stories, which is consistent and expected throughout the top newsfeed. “We are really trying to push forward this idea that we have people working behind the scenes here – it’s something that other sports providers have abandoned over the last couple of years – We still see a tremendous amount of value in that,” Kris shared.
This is a first for Sports Media Group, USA TODAY and Gannett in terms of having a dedicated sports application, so while they may have arrived later in the scene, they are doing their due diligence to make sure that this will be an app that will become essential for the busy sports fan. “We wanted us to take to the time to do two things: 1. Create something that was going to be sound and consistent from an experience standpoint, and 2. That it was sub fold and useful for us in terms of the other products we launch throughout the year and have those work together,” Kris said.
Timing was also something Sports Media Group faced when releasing the app, as they contemplated launching at the time of the Super Bowl. Despite the hype and pandemonium that Super Bowl week creates, they weighed the pros and cons and saw greater benefit in going after the next larger sporting event that is March Madness to truly embed and execute the vision of the mobile app.
As users are beginning to adopt the USA TODAY Sports for their smartphone, there are plenty of enhancements and ideas are on the roadmap as the team moves forward. So far though, they are receiving feedback from users that the app is fulfilling the pain point or utility of simply being in the know of sports headlines and close games. However, they’re learning from their current users that they would be interested in providing access that allows users to target a little more about the sports and teams they follow.
“When we were putting the application together and launching it, we very consciously left true-explicit personalization out of the mix. To some degree, that was counterproductive of the overall goal of what we were trying to do with the app. But we do realize that personalization is something that is important to today’s consumer and particularly one who uses mobile devices,” Kris went over.
For Sports Media Group, it’s only the first step in opening up new avenues for sports fans that traditionally visited USA Today Sports on their smartphone web browsers. As they move forward, they believe the product will help sharpen and refine their tactics of satisfying mobile users – Doing so with heavy-emphasis on curation.
In discussing the competetition in the mobile sports ap space and opportunities still available to serve fans Mark explained, “We were looking for our place within the competitive landscape. You have personalized apps like ESPN and Bleacher Report, data-heavy apps like Yahoo and TheScore, so we were looking to steer clear of those – which are all very good experiences by themselves, but we thought that there were still some holes and so the way we wanted to go was around a high-level of curation, meaning that our editors were really super-focused on providing content that resonates on a mobile platform and that they’re really focused in on this idea of must-know trending sports news, that there was really something to the immediacy there. Not just in terms of immediacy of an AP story just breaking, but immediacy in terms of “Oh my gosh, LeBron’s got 45 in the 3rd quarter – turn on TNT.”
